There are things that inhabit graveyards, and just not the spirits of the dead. Though the dead aren’t hedged from graveyards either. I once saw one of the dead arguing with a lemure. Lemure is a Roman term, refered to the forsaken dead. They change. This was in a graveyard and the lemure was there to feed. The recently deceased wasn’t having it.

When I see them do they look like what would be physical to you? The dead no, they are in a sort of dream like state usually. A lemure maybe, if its been feeding really well. They don’t have the power of speech though. Do I see through them? Potentially not, that is a movie trick. If you saw a lemure and then tried to do anything with it, it would seem to vanish like a hallucinatory presence but more consistent that a hallucination and persistent. Also usually distorted in appearance. Other people walk through them? Potentially, yes.

Consider a very bitter person you once saw. Can you visualize them? Now the expression on their face is limited by the mechanical restrictions of the flesh. Make that look more pure and less restricted by say the weight of years or any biological mood shifts. Hence the horror element. Also, notice how the memory of someone you knew blurs? Doesn’t lose substance, but becomes less distinct and more abstract? This is what the normal dead look like, and even well cared for photos undergo that change when the person dies. Like the dreams you have of a person, but you don’t see a face. The dead can look like that.

The difference between one of the dead and a lemure is this; The abstract dead can be distorted into a scary appearance by the mind of the viewer. The lemures aren’t being distorted and defiantly resist projection.

The realm of death is actually not so scary unless you really must see life as separate from death. Then it would terrify. It is why native Americans saw the ‘reaper’ as a horse. It wasn’t a big deal. It was just like going to another tribal camp, just not an easy trip. Some saw a reaper as a boat with a person on it. There is always an intelligence of some sort.

Death was dramatic though not seen as evil in Egypt, so the reaper was seen as a jackal. Jackals are predatory carrion eaters. An ambush predator when they are being predatory. Anubis consumed the damned, and the righteous would not have strayed so far from priests that they couldn’t be mummified. Going your own way in Egypt was a risk to not only your own life, but the tribe also. So again Anubis wasn’t evil, but was sort of scary. Set and his followers crimes were being outsiders, and the connection between Set and Anubis is blurry. In the back of their minds it was thought that Anubis favoured the followers of Set because they were small groups and seemed hidden and yet didn’t die.

Anubis was immortal death, though Anubis was not an ender. This is why he is often shown with a Sheppard’s tools and why his priests’ had exclusive rights to funerary offerings. They weren’t thieves, they were accepting the pay, and they were not your final fate. They were just the collector.